4.  The applicant was born in 1966 and is currently serving a prison sentence in the Kocaeli F-Type Prison.
5.  On 11 October 1996 he was arrested and taken into custody on suspicion of being a member of and aiding and abetting the PKK (Kurdistan Workers’ Party, an illegal organisation).
6.  On 18 October 1996 he was brought before a single judge at the 2nd Chamber of the Istanbul State Security Court, who ordered him to be placed in pre-trial detention.
7.  On 25 October 1996 the public prosecutor at the Istanbul State Security Court filed a bill of indictment against the applicant and nine other persons, accusing the applicant of membership of an illegal organisation and of taking part in the murder of two persons for the organisation, along with his co-accused. The public prosecutor requested that the applicant be convicted and sentenced under Article 125 of the former Turkish Criminal Code for having engaged in acts aimed at the separation of a part of the territory of the State.
8.  The Istanbul State Security Court held a total of twenty-five hearings following the commencement of the trial on 13 January 1997. The main witnesses against the defendants, who were all police officers, were not heard until 27 March 1998, because they failed to attend the hearings.
9.  Between 4 September 1998 and 26 May 1999 the proceedings were adjourned four times because the defendants in detention, including the applicant, were not taken to the hearings by the prison authorities.
10. On 13 June 2001 the Istanbul State Security Court found the applicant guilty as charged and sentenced him to the death penalty under Article 125 of the former Criminal Code.
11.  On 28 January 2002 the Court of Cassation found that the information regarding the defendants’ identities had not been duly noted in the operative part of the reasoned judgment of the Istanbul State Security Court. It therefore quashed the judgment on those purely procedural grounds and remitted the case to the first-instance court.
12.  On 27 September 2002 the Istanbul State Security Court once again convicted the applicant under Article 125 of the former Criminal Code but, having regard to the recent amendments introduced by Law no. 4771 to that Article, sentenced him to life imprisonment instead of the death penalty. In its judgment, the Istanbul State Security Court noted that the Law on the Execution of Sentences (Law no. 647) and the relevant provisions of the Prevention of Terrorism Act (Law no. 3713) on conditional release in force at the material time would not be applicable to the applicant and that he would, therefore, serve his sentence until the end of his life.
13.  On 30 June 2003 the Court of Cassation upheld the judgment of the Istanbul State Security Court. It appears that this judgment was deposited with the registry of the first-instance court on 12 September 2003.
14.  It further appears that following the entry into force of the new Criminal Code (Law no. 5237) on 1 June 2005, the applicant’s case-file was automatically subjected to a re-examination by the Istanbul Assize Court, which found, on 1 November 2006, that the new Criminal Code did not require that any changes to the previous judgment against the applicant be made. The Court has not been provided with a copy of the relevant decision of the Istanbul Assize Court.
15.  The committal order (müddetname) issued by the Kocaeli public prosecutor’s office on 24 February 2009 concerning the execution of the applicant’s sentence indicated that the applicant would not be entitled to conditional release by virtue of section 1/B (2) of Law no. 4771 and section 107 § 16 of Law no. 5275 on the Execution of Sentences and Security Measures.